God is good. He does not work in mysterious ways. And this is the diary of one families journey to him. My goal for all my children is to find their place in Heaven, we are a quarter of the way there as Braden was born into Heaven 1/3/07. We have 3 boys living and loving life one day at a time! Lane Michael and Ethan are 11 year old twins and Ryan joined our family 8/18/09. What a joy they are! Everyone right now is at my favorite age they've ever been! I can't wait to see what's next!

Friday, March 6, 2009

Before the boys were born, Todd and I decided we would like to try and keep the boys from sucking their thumbs, we knew it would be a struggle to break them of this habit. Over the years I've gone back and forth on this issue...Lane Michael never wanted to be a thumb sucker....he would much rather someone else pacify him so he gladly took the pacifier and gladly gave it up at an appropriate age. Ethan would have like to be a thumb sucker....he tried very hard in the beginning and when he would start looking for it, Todd or I would replace it with his pacifier, it worked like a charm and we never had a problem after that, he too gave up his pacifier at the same time Lane gave his up. The problem we're having now is that Ethan would still like to be a thumb sucker, when he gets scared or nervous, the thumb goes in the mouth instinctually. He has a problem with security, I think it has to do with a lot of different factors, he's had an interesting life. We moved from Texas to Ohio when they were 2 mos old, back to Texas at 6 mos old, back to Ohio at 9 mos and lived with my parents until our house was ready to move into when they were 11 mos....I went back to work part time when they were 12 mos and full time when they were 18 mos. We lived with my parents for a short time just before they were 2, and and again when they were 3, Lane was diagnosed with a very scary disease when they were 3 (almost 4), this had a huge impact on Ethan. Braden died right before they turned 4, and we moved to town soon after that. He has so many reasons to be insecure. I don't know if sucking his thumb would have been better for his security or worse because he would still be sucking it consistently. Which brings me to the point of this post....I'm not sure if I should allow this baby to suck his/her thumb....people always talk about babies sucking their thumbs on the ultra sounds and none of our children have ever been caught sucking their fingers, hands, or thumbs, so maybe I won't have to make that decision....at least I have a few months to mull it over!